A recent study shows that chromatin assembly factor 1 (CAF-1) plays an important role in epigenetic regulation of gene expression at the heterochromatic region. This work was conducted by a research group led by Dr. Renjie Jiao, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In eukaryotic cells, DNA and histones are assembled into chromatin. Proper chromatin structure is the basis of DNA replication, transcription, recombination and repair. Histone modifications, nucleosome organization and positioning determines higher-level chromatin structure, thus controlling gene expression and silence. The heterochromatin region has typical epigenetic modifications related to transcriptional repression. How the epigenetic information is formed and maintained and the plasticity of such epigenetic regulations have attracted scientist’s attention. Dr. Jiao’s research group recently found that dCAF-1 regulates the level of methylation at the H3K9 site of histone H3 in the heterochromatin region and the recruitment of HP1 protein to determine the structure of heterochromatin and stability maintenance.

This finding provides a clue to understand and uncover the mechanism of epigenetic inheritance and their paper has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Cell Science.